The World Bird Sanctuary’s mission is to preserve the earth’s biological diversity and to secure the future of threatened bird species in their natural environments. We work to fulfill that mission through education, captive breeding, field studies and rehabilitation.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

What's That Bird Doing?.......Being Comfortable!

While
working at the World Bird Sanctuary, one of the more common questions we field
from visitors is some version of “What's that bird doing?” The bird in question could be doing a
number of different things, such as flapping, stretching, coughing up a pellet,
or just simply turning around. As
a naturalist, some of these behaviors are more heart-warming than others, and
this type of behavior is what I'll be talking about today.

Duncan, a Wedge-tailed Eagle, rousing while on the glove
of Alyssa, a summer intern (photo: ML)

When comfortable, our birds will show it in a number of
ways.The most heart-warming of
these being adisplay of natural
comfort-showing behaviors while we're handling them--be it on-site or when
we're away on programs.These
behaviors include rousing (shaking out and rearranging their feathers), feaking
(cleaning their beaks off on a branch, stone or a trainer’s glove), as well as
preening.(Preening is when a bird
tends to the condition of its feathers by gathering oil on its beak from a
gland at the base of its tail, and distributing it on its feathers while
cleaning and rearranging the feathers.This oil reconditions and waterproofs the feathers.Preening is a very important behavior
for all birds.)

While our birds exhibit all of these behaviors on a daily
basis, most of these behaviors occur when the birds are sitting on their
perches, just watching the day unfold.The times it's rewarding is when the birds are on our glovesin the middle of a program, and they're comfortable
enough with us handling them to exhibit natural behaviors.

Jet, an American
Kestrel, showing that he's comfortable with the situation by sitting with his
body feathers puffed out. (photo: Gay Schroer)

The most noticeable of the behaviors I mentioned aboveis rousing, which is when a bird will puff out,
shake out, and then slick back down their feathers.For me personally, whenever one of our birds does this when
I'm handling them, it always makes me grin, regardless of what mood I'm
in.About half the time,
immediately following a rouse, the birds will waggle their tail feathers, as an
extended sign of comfort or contentment.This behavior lets me know I’m
doing everything correctly with the bird.

This wild juvenile Red-tailed Hawk cleaned the feathers
and blood off his beak on the large branch after finishing his Starling meal—a
good example of feaking. (photo: GS)

I generally see feaking happen at one of two times:either we've just finished flying a
bird, or right after we put them back on their perch.Feaking is when a bird closes its eyes and rubs its beak on
something to clean it, be it the glove we're handling them on or the perch
we've just put them back on.This
behavior happening immediately after flying is understandable, since they could
have bits of their meat reward stuck on their beak.Why they do it so often after they get put back on their
perch could be a sign that they're back in even morecomfortable
surroundings.

One of the Turkey Vultures on the display line preening
(ML)

Another time I've seen birds feak is right after they're
done preening (cleaning or adjusting their feathers). While not quite as likely
to get a grin out of me, it's still pretty cool to be handling a bird, say
while talking to a group of people, and have the bird feel relaxed enough with
the surroundings to make sure their feathers and beak are in order and looking
nice and clean.

As I said earlier, our birds have the opportunities to
display these behaviors at any point during the day, as they almost always
do.The times when it means more
is when they decide they feel comfortable enough with whoever happens to be
handling them that they decide to display these signs of comfort.

Most of us at the World Bird Sanctuary consider this to be
the ultimate birdy complement.

Keep an eye out next time you're at the World Bird
Sanctuary, and see if you can spot any of these behaviors for yourselves!

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World Bird Sanctuary is located at 125 Bald Eagle Ridge Road Valley Park, MO 63088, just outside of St. Louis, MO.

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For visitor information call 636-225-4390 or email us at education@worldbirdsanctuary.org

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